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Firefox 5 Already?

Wow, that was fast. It was only in April that I was giving my review of Firefox 4 and now Mozilla is already releasing the Firefox 5 browser. Is there a major problem with Firefox 4? As it turns out, no.

It turns out this is the plan by Mozilla and the way they’re going to be doing things from now on; at least until they get tired of doing it this way (that’s my prediction). Their expectation is to have a new release every 3 months to try to better keep up with quick and ever-changing web technologies. The fact that, in my opinion, Firefox 4 was much better than Firefox 3 (though one of my friends differs on that view) and now we’re switching to something else is slightly irksome, but it’s hard to gripe about someone that actually keeps improving on things that we’re not paying for, unlike my rant in January about many things being new and unimproved.

What’s new in this release? Other than a few cosmetic changes the only thing I’ve heard about is a few bug fixes. Frankly, that leaves me less than impressed, but it might turn out to be a big deal. This time around I haven’t heard anyone talking about reducing how Firefox hogs resources, and that’s a major difference in past browser updates. Also, I wish someone would work on updating the Adblock Plus add-on to better help us block things we don’t like such as popups and the like.

And, based on the speed that we’re now going to see, we can look forward to Firefox 6 and Firefox 7 coming out before the end of the year or possibly at the beginning of January; gush! This is the way things are going, so it’s probably a waste of time asking what your thoughts are about the speed of coming changes, but I’m going to do it anyway; how do you feel about all of this?

Mitch,
I don’t use Firefox, have always just stuck with Safari so I don’t know enough about it to say what I would like. That being said, I think every 3 months upgrading is a little much if there isn’t going to be any significant changes.

I didn’t like Firefox 4 during the first few days of its released but I think I got the hang of it now. I’m just thankful that my add-ons are still compatible on Firefox 5 because otherwise, the upgrade will really be disappointing for me. 🙂

Thanks for update, Mitch, honestly I didn’t checked the link. My first thought was incompatibility, I am getting tired of Windows 7, yesterday I found that my DivX converter is not working and got few issues installing new software, insane.

I stopped using Firefox altogether ’cause it’s painfully evident there are serious memory management problems, and that’s been confirmed by the Mozilla team itself. The more it stays open the more memory it’ll end up sucking, and that’s just not acceptable. I am sticking to Chrome which I find far more responsive and memory-efficient.

Gabriele, I just don’t like Chrome for some reason (well, the tracking thing is a bit issue with me), but I might have to take a serious look at it if Firefox doesn’t follow through on its supposed improvements. You’re right, it’s definitely a memory hog; one day last week it was over a gig!

Don’t get me started on this topic. I could probably write a blog post about this myself. I don’t really understand why they have to update everything so often. It’s getting kind of annoying to me. I’m with Mia. Just give me one good version once a year.

DeAnna, looks like that’s not going to be happening anymore, and based on some of the comments, it’s a common practice with half of the browsers. And it looks like WordPress 3.2 will be coming soon as well.

Although the Firefox 4 is quite awesome and it works really well but if they are launching Firefox 5 then I think we should give it a try as it would surely have some new and improved features with some advances in overall browser performance. Thanks for letting us know about it.

I am always careful and concerned about new versions of firefox. I have gotten so used to so many plugins that firefox has, that now they are almost part of the browser for me.

Whenever there is a new version comes along, it is virtually guaranteed that many plugins will not work. It is quite painful to install/uninstall/reinstall to get back to the older version to get the older version of the plugin to work.

I always wait for a long time and make sure that the plugins are compatible with the new version before I hit that upgrade button.

Amanda, if they’re going to be updating every 3 months from now on, waiting a long time could put you many versions behind at some point. I waited a long time before going to FF3, and I never liked it. I’m of mixed feelings with this so far.

I actually didn’t have any issue with FF4 except for its hogging memory, and I thought maybe FF5 would fix that, even though it wasn’t mentioned in any of the update information. Nope; and it took away from add-ons I liked.

John, I’m just starting to notice that I can’t get into some of my affiliate programs because their sites won’t recognize the browser for cookies, even though I have it set up to receive all cookies. Also, it won’t retain cookies, so I’m having to re-add things all the time. Not their best version so far in my opinion.

Good post, and well-timed. I’m going crazy trying to decide on a browser to use, Mitch. As you know my computer recently crashed and I’m now taking a good hard look at what I’ve got on it and seeing what I can change to make it work better. My problem is I’ve a very old system that’s only got one Gb of memory and no room for more and can’t afford a new computer! So I’ve got to make do with what I’ve got. That said, I looked today at what RAM Firefox 4 needs compared with FF3, and it’s 512Mb compared to 128Mb so I’m thinking of going back to the previous version… problem is, when they stop supporting that one, which will be soon… what then?

I may end up having to go back to IE, which I hate!

These rapid changes don’t work for me at all. I’ve problems with concentration and memory (my own, I mean) anyway, and this stuff just makes everything so much worse. But the internet is built for younger people, I think. 🙁

Val, don’t worry about support issues from browsers. Security is a different matter, but if you have a virus protection program and a firewall program on your computer, any browser will do. Nothing will protect you if you go to a lot of bad sites, and I’m doubting that’s an issue you have. 😉